Letters from a life forgotten

The tearing of a yellowed air mail catapults me back to that time when writing a letter was .. communicating. When e-mails were a novelty ... when people were more conversant. 

Back in the present: Each rip is like a whiplash; even though those letters are not mine; even though those memories are not mine... I just felt like I am losing something precious.

I am cleaning up the house and, in a way, cleaning up memories... and making new ones for myself. And this way, I discovered a treasure: a treasure from his past.

There is this carton full of letters: to my husband. From a time when I didn't know him; the time when I didn't even know of his existence. The oldest letter that I discovered was dated June 2000; packed inside a greeting card. That was the time when he had just moved to Bangalore.

It all began with this greeting card that gave the definition of Doofus. I just wanted to know who was so comfortable with my husband --- a man that I know to be quite the serious person --- to call him a doofus.

When I read the letter, I realised the friend was calling himself doofus. I was only curious about that person. It was this friend who had apparently somehow fallen out with my husband. And what I got to know was so much more that just satiated curiosity. That letter was something from both their pasts; it was their lives's story that was written --- albeit in ridiculously bad handwriting --- in those four pages.

They told me of a person who was just 21. These letters told me of two persons who cared for each other. I am a bit afraid to write any more than this, as somehow any more than this would be betraying those two. Even though I haven't met that other person... even though....

Then there were letters from his parents; typical the same. Opening sentences were enquiring after his health, the latter half his mother used to scold about his grammar and spelling mistakes, chide him for not writing and then tell him about how the life in Pattambi was since his last one.

His father, on the other hand, was very to the point. He would send him resistance charts and tell him to do certain things --- mostly related to some policy or the other.

There was this one from his girlfriend in Canada. I should have torn it the moment I saw the stamp... but I didn't. Don't ask me why... I think it was because I had already skimmed through so many of those letters that one more didn't make a difference. I guess, the excitement of taking out those fragile folds from their yellowed envelopes was a headrush that I didn't want to let go.

But I couldn't. Read that girlfriend's letter. He came about and started asking me, with a lot of anguish ... or perhaps embarrassment ... to not read that one. So I didn't.

However, unlike the proverbial cat, curiosity is something that you can't kill. So I got to the cleaning again: reading the sender's address and then emptying forgotten envelopes; leafing through those letters ... because I don't really want to hurt my husband even though I am curious about his past... the one that he says is "a part of his life that he doesn't like".  

My brother has now taken over the cleaning part and I am here ... feeling the loss of someone else's memories.

Do not go gentle into that good night...

What is death? Is it the end of a life with the last breath that a person takes? Or is it the slow painful decay of a someone's life, to be reduced to a shadow of their old self?

Dylan Thomas might have just got it right when he tells his own father to "not go gentle into that good night" and to "rage against the dying of the light". But how much can a person rage against the inevitable? Especially when the inevitable has slowly eaten up the body: part by part; inch by inch?

When someone close to us is ... dying... the only thing that goes through our mind is to make that person as comfortable as we can. We put up with the irritability, the constant ranting, the snide commentary, believing it will be the end of that suffering either way. Soon. After all, that's what the movies show.

There are times when we would want to pull the plug, quite literally, because we can't bear to see the suffering. Maybe because euthanasia is not yet legalised, maybe because we're too cowardly to do so, we end up sitting up with our dying friend/parent/lover/spouse/sibling and praying that their next breath be their last one. And, then it becomes a chant. We fantasize of putting them out of their misery, when what we really want is to get out of ours. We want that misery to end. Soon. After all, all that feeling is what makes us human.

But how much are we able to "get over" in the face of the eventual end? Wives lose husbands; children lose fathers or mothers... the loss is endless, measureless. We walk around like zombies, just going through the motions of life, carrying around the guilt of wanting them to die without any more suffering, feeling the void that the person has left in our life forever. We want to rant at them for leaving us and again feeling guilty for wanting them around, suffering so much. We want to move on. Soon. After all, we are still alive and thankful about it.

This day, that year....

I never believed in the cliché “life comes to a full circle”. That is, I didn’t believe it until now. How ironic is that I will go back to the city where my professional career began; not as a person with nearly a decade’s of knowledge and experience, but as an out-of-work copy editor/homemaker. That too on the anniversary of my first journalism job.
If you ask me what I remember from that first day, I would say, “nothing”. It’s been seven years since that day: It wasn’t a traumatic day, no matter how afraid I had been before I joined that work place; it wasn’t a memorable day, except perhaps I got to see photographs that I wouldn’t have seen if it wasn’t for this job; and most importantly, I had already been working there for two weeks, albeit as an intern.
Chennai; most of my angst-ridden (at least they seemed so to me then) blogs came from o city. In fact, I think myself to have become a better writer – and a better typist – because of all the practice that I got writing and then typing them on to this blog in this city. How much it is providence and how much coincidence that I am going to be in this city next month, same day I started as a lowly paid “web writer” seven years to the day? How much of a coincidence is it that I am writing this blog on the same day as I stepped into a proper newsroom seven years to the day?
Anyway, all that doubt over coincidence and providence aside, seven years and several more hundred greys later I have realised that this city gave me a lot. It taught me to look at my latent talent and shortcomings with an unbiased eye. It helped me begin to understand a new world – a news world. It helped me live a life – however briefly – that I had only dreamt of. It took me in when I was barely an adult and turned me into a full-fledged one.
And on this anniversary, without any qualms, the only thing I can say to this city is ... thank you.

Mr so-and-so

The arch of her infeet is a bit too round,

The swell of her breast is a tad too hard

The curve of her hip is a bit too straight

The blood in her veins is a bit too cold

Mr so-and-so, the woman you love is a bit too dead

 

The clothes on her person were not really there,

The hair on her head was supposed to be there,

The skin on her body is worse to wear,

And, oh, her Jimmy Choos are missing one of the pair.

Mr so-and-so, I'm sorry for the woman for whom you care

 

The infeet has been broken brutally,

The breast has been cut out with a saw,

The hip has been hammered on multiple times...

Mr so-and-so, rigor mortis has now set in.

 

The clothes are now damp ash.

The hair is singed to the scalp.

The skin has had eighty five per cent burns.

We are still looking for the missing Jimmy Choo

Mr so-and-so, burn in hell for setting your wife on fire.

That ennui called life...

Sitting in office, while waiting for at least one story — of the six in three pages — to come; reading sort-of interesting and pointless updates from "friends" on Facebook; planning my weekly off day the next day and fighting off some weird flu, I think to myself: What the fuck am I doing with my life.

Boredom leads me to plan a holiday to Turkey. I make a good seven-day trip to the country — starting from packing my best clothes and virgin passport, to landing on a balmy day (it's my plan! I want it to be a balmy day) at Istanbul international airport to where to stay and what to eat (I am a vegetarian, I have to look out for things which will not make me gag) —  I realise I am about ninety-nine thousand rupees short to go through with the trip. Holiday in Turkey, of course, gets cancelled. 

I then decide to be pro-active about my life to come and think about government job options.

Why government jobs? Because their medical policy is amazing. Because I don't really have to do anything but be a pencil pusher at work, and do everything else that I wanted to do in life in my spare time. Because I will get Sundays off again (I have to fall ill or plan three weeks ahead if I want a Sunday off). Because I will be part of my family instead of living like paying guest at my home. Because, at the end of six years of pointless editing and having to walk to HR department to figure out why you weren't paid as you were supposed to, I realised that all that I have to call my own is a bank-mortgaged car and an outdated computer. Because I am bored. Because, because, because. 

Now, at nearly 28 years old, my options for government job are limited to probationary officer with centralised banks, civil service examination and IAS. Considering how bad I have been at studying, I can promptly rule out the last. Okay, also civil services: It's as bad as IAS. I am only left with bank officer as my "last" resort. 

If only I wouldn't imagine myself as the Auntyji with an ever-expanding backside who sounds like your neighbourhood banshee in that avatar...

A look at the system clock tells me it has only been fifteen minutes since quarter-life crisis hit me. Depression begins to set in as I realise most of my friends from school college, even post-graduation, have been happily married while I was defending my career from my mother. ("What career?" nags a voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like my mother's which I desperately try to drown out with humming.)

Through my meandering thoughts, I am then transported to a decade ago, when my mother used to shake me out of my sleep. At about noon. On a Sunday. Those were the days, when "chaadar taan kar sona" was all what I used to do. Now, Sunday morning begins at a relatively early time of 9 am with a dreadful feeling — I have to be in office in a few hours. The dread is intensified when on the previous night you have had to say "No yaar, aaj nahi"  to at least three of your friends who work in the corporate sector and have Saturdays and Sundays off. Those bastards. (Of course you will say this now, after six years of drudgery when you realised that well-paid job is so much better than well-meaning job. Shut up! mom.)

It's only been another five minutes in my crisis.... I wish I was a... 

Aha! I get the first of my stories — of course, it has to be a beloved crime story. On rape. Of a four-year-old. 

Such a meaningful day mine is... Ah.